The Irish Thug

I finally freed up a little cash off of the other sites I play to give WPEX a shot.

The Facts:
Still a baby, but growing. In the last thirty days, the count on cash players has increased by 25%. (Source: Poker Site Scout, additional info on Source to follow.)
Tonight at 9(EST) there where 2 full 100NL and 3 full 50NL tables and then one of each playing short handed. 1/2 and 2/4 both had 5 full tables.

The Look:
Setup is slightly different than the standard. Your cards are shown next to your action buttons (tiny versions also appear on the table). When you fold you cards are shadowed, but still visible for the entire hand. Now you have to notice you would have caught that straight. I altered the table graphics right away. I copied the “Waffle Cards” (here) that I use on Party and Stars. Everything else I have can be found here. The everything else page does a lot of good things. Your stack get a different graphic than the rest of the table and the active player is highlighted.

The Software:
This is where they still have a few issues to work out. I have read they are taking steps in the right direction.

• Table Response is a little slow. A tick or two will drop of the clock between your click and the action.
• Tables steal focus even if you have to act at another table.
• The slider is as unreliable as Party, so entering bets are tricky. I think I could be able to pull of an AutoHotKey script for the betting, no grantees now.
• No short handed tables for NL yet. I have been told they are on the way. At present, short handed is 5 players. 6 is kind of the standard, but WPEX is not the only site to run 5 handed tables.
• Password restrictions force you to use only letters and digits and only 8 characters (pretty weak considering certain places force you to do longer elaborate passwords.
• The biggest issue is that hand histories are not saved to the hard drive. You have to request they get sent to you. Puts a good delay on getting stats.

The Stats:
High Stakes Poker was on tonight, so I only played 200 hands. On the first night I won a little. (Rigged?) Over this tiny bit of data, I have payed (and will receive back) $3.86 per hundred hands playing 50NL. If I played only on WPEX for thirty days that would be over $200 that I get returned. And that is if I don’t go back to 100NL (which hopefully I do soon).

Overall:
A decent list of things that need to happen before WPEX can be the real deal and gain popularity. Rafe free is a great selling point and I think that it will do good things for online poker when people start to look at it. The site still needs new players and we’ll have to wait and see if only veterans stay at a rake free site or will novices show up and stay. I give WPEX a C+ based on the action so far and have listed a few things that would bring it up to a solid B or higher.

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Poker Site Scout
A nice little site that is very useful. On the outside, it appears to just be a ranking of poker sites, but it does deeper. These figures are just cash players. Party and Stars are still 1 and 2, but for those that only play cash, this is what you want to see. Active players and Active tables. Sites are ranked by a 24 hour high-water-point on active players.

As you look deeper you find that each site has it’s own page with a in depth breakdown by level and type of table. There is a search feature that will bring up all the totals for different site based on your selected level or table type. Also, hidden back in the far corner, is a Pro-Finder. A list of Pro’s, their Aliases, where they play and if they are playing now.